Fraternal flattery is usually frowned upon. But sometimes it is simply
unavoidable. For years Rob Baxter, Exeter’s excellent and clear-thinking
coach, has underplayed the efforts of his brother Richard, his hard-working
No 8.

But then came a stunning performance from the younger sibling as stand-in captain in Exeter’s 42-28 demolition of Harlequins last weekend.

Baxter senior could hold back no longer. “I think Richie is a much better player than he gets credit for,” he beams, “and part of that is probably because I can’t shout in the press about him every week because he is my brother. He is one of these guys who is very underrated in what he does for the team.

"He is normally our top contact guy, if you add up tackles, carries, clear-outs. If he doesn’t top it, he is normally second or third every week. I think he has been one of the form back-rowers in the Premiership since we have been there.’’

That match against Harlequins was Baxter junior’s 411th for Exeter and unsurprisingly, given his ubiquitously destructive performance, he was made man of the match. “It is right up there amongst my greatest-ever wins in an Exeter shirt,” he said.

The timing was sharp, because on Saturday Exeter take their first-ever swigs from the Heineken Cup, in truth more of a yard-of-ale-in-10-seconds-type challenge away at Leinster, champions for the last two seasons.

Who would have thought it when Richie made his debut as a 19 year-old away to Fylde in the Allied Dunbar Premiership Two in 1997, just looking to follow in the footsteps of his club stalwart father, John, and brother Rob in an Exeter shirt?

“Isn’t this what you want to be doing, playing for a successful club and in big games throughout the year?” Richie, 34, says now of Exeter’s remarkable rise. “To play in the Heineken Cup will be the pinnacle of my career, as it would be for any player in the English game.”

But it is all the more special when it is your own club, first graced while in nappies, that has progressed against all the odds to that pinnacle. For, quite simply, the Baxters are Exeter. The brothers played alongside each other in the Exeter pack before Rob became coach. They both still live, and work whenever they can, on the family’s 330-acre livestock farm on the outskirts of Exeter.

They set the standards by which Exeter operate. As men of the soil, they are, quite naturally, grounded benchmarks only achieved by the hardest of graft.

As Rob says when looking ahead to Saturday’s match at Leinster: “We want people to realise we are a good side and that we deserve to be in the Heineken Cup. We worked very hard last year to get that fifth spot in the Premiership last season. What we’ve done well at the club is take lots of little steps and we’ve never got beaten down by failure.”

And they are not afraid of failure or anything else. Indeed coach Baxter said at the end of last season that he wanted to be in a “group of death” in Europe just so that his team could judge themselves against the very best. And with Leinster, Clermont Auvergne and the Scarlets alongside them in Pool Five, his wish has certainly been granted.

“We’ve always talked about ever since we got into the Premiership [this is their third season there],” he says, “that we’d hit every experience full on and get the most from it. And this is just the next step for us. I’m fully expecting it to be very, very tough. And I hope it is, because that is the only way we will improve as a team.

"I want to use it so that we are a better Premiership side after it. I’m actually pretty happy with the group. It’s not so much about wins and losses. We don’t talk too much about them at the club – we talk about potential and performances, and I think for an Exeter team to go over to Leinster and perform would be a fantastic thing.”